


baby how we spoon like no one else

by stott183



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Love Confessions, The Bed makes a pg appearance, sleepy kids say stupid (true) things, technically not canon compliant anywhere but we're Pretending its s2, this is like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 08:58:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18753172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stott183/pseuds/stott183
Summary: “It’s just that loving you doesn’t even make sense right now! I mean, look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We barely have our basic needs met, how can we be expected to keep this up?” Gert heaves a breath and looks at Chase. He doesn’t look put out. In fact, he is positively glowing.“You love me?” Oh, that smug bastard. Did she really say that? Did she mean to? Of course she loves him, but— fuck. She’s in love with Chase Stein.ORGert's anxiety gets the best of her, in the best way





	baby how we spoon like no one else

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song You And I by Ingrid Michelson, which was also the inspiration and is referenced in the last bit kinda. this is not technically a scene that could have happened but I wanted Bedroom Content so...
> 
> This is just a cute silly fic to make me less sad, thank you and goodnight

Chase sleeps like a baby on this musty bed, which is so totally unfair. He’d slipped out of coherent thought somewhere between vehemently defending his status as the muscle of the group and promising he’d get Molly a new ‘kitty hat. You know what I mean’. Gert had started to explain why actually, conflating womanhood with genitalia was problematic when she looked over and saw him snoring softly. Now, after about 5 hours of decent sleep, she’s looking at him again. His face is turned toward her, sunlight from the window shining through dust to reach his hair. His mouth is open, and she can see a little drool in the bottom corner. She can’t resist running her fingers over the curly bits of hair on his forehead, over the moles on his cheek, the lobe of his ear. He cracks an eye open and smiles lazily up at her.

“I could hear you thinking from a mile away, babe.” He loops his hand around her neck and shifts upward, attempting to meet in the middle for a kiss. “C’mere.” She hesitates, and he frowns up at her. 

She laughs nervously. “I don’t wanna subject you to my morning breath.” 

“That is the least of my worries, Gert. Please let me give my girlfriend a good morning kiss.” The word girlfriend sends a pleasant shot of goosebumps through the back of Gert’s head and down her spine. She blushes, smiles, and relents. The kiss feels as new and weird and good as all the previous ones. She loves kissing him, the slow slide of lips and tongue, gentle and careful, moment trapped by the sunlight of the window behind them. She imagines them, for a moment, stuck here like a fly in amber. Haloed in warm light forever. No more pain. 

They pause for air, foreheads resting against each other. Gert attempts to pull back, ready to get out of bed and start the day. Chase’s hand finds her waist, holds her firm. “Just, live in this with me for a minute. Just a minute, Gert.” His voice is soft and scratchy, but it strikes something in Gert. It’s an ache she can’t identify, doesn’t want to look in the face. It feels good but she’s scared of it, what it means and who it makes her. She pulls back with more force, and gets off the bed. 

“I can’t just live right here, Chase. This isn’t a real scenario. We can’t— we can’t,” She scrambles for words and finds none. “I don’t know!” 

Chase sighs. “I know. It’s a lot to take in. It’s just a nice way to wake up.” He tilts his head, smiles warmly. “You know, next to a girl I really really like.” He’s attempting to bait her into another conversation but this one is still wriggling in her head, a slippery fish. 

“It’s just that loving you doesn’t even make sense right now! I mean, look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We barely have our basic needs met, how can we be expected to keep this up?” Gert heaves a breath and looks at Chase. He doesn’t look put out. In fact, he is positively glowing. 

“You love me?” Oh, that smug bastard. Did she really say that? Did she mean to? Of course she loves him, but— fuck. She’s in love with Chase Stein. 

“That was not the point of my statement!” She sputters, red in the face and slightly dizzy. 

“I know it wasn’t, but you love me, so it doesn’t matter.” He stands up from his position on the bed and starts walking toward her. She starts backing up, but hits the bookshelf almost immediately. He comes to stand right in front of her. Trapped. 

“I love you too, you know.” His voice is quiet, and low, like he pitched it down on purpose. Gert has no comment on that. He slips a hand to her cheek, then down the back of her neck to where it meets her shoulder. Her whole body sings, waves of nerves and endorphins turn her knees weak. There are tears in her eyes. 

“I do know.” It’s only a little snarky, but Chase plays along. 

“Oh no no, Yorkes, you can’t Han Solo me, you fuckin said it first.” The look in his eyes is ripped straight from childhood memories, prank wars and secret missions. 

“I haven’t technically said it, so I totally can.” They’re still inches apart, touching at the waist, and where Chase rests his hand on her shoulder. Their proximity, Gert will maintain, is the only reason Chase’s puppy eyes work. 

He looks down at her with an impossibly innocent expression. “Please say it.” 

Gert tries to look away, but she knows it won’t work. He’s gonna start whimpering soon. She looks him dead on. “Chase Stein, I love you.” She ducks out from between him and the bookshelf and jumps back on to the bed. 

“Careful, Gert, you’ll break the bed. We don’t know how long its been here.” 

“Oh, I’m gonna break the bed, am I? What about if I...” Gert stands on the bed and starts bouncing on the balls of her feet. She feels good, really good. Just for a minute, maybe, but Chase was as right as he ever was. She could live here, just for a moment. Chase walks back to the bed and climbs on it so he’s kneeling in front of her, craning his neck up to her face. His head sits about at her belly button here, and she can feel him breathing on her stomach through her shirt. Her muscles tighten on their own accord. 

“Come down here with me.” Chase’s voice is soft, warm. He’s moving surprisingly slowly in comparison to her speedy, jerking movements. She thinks about the article she read about how cats are weak long term prey, if you follow them slowly they give up. Chase is waiting her out, letting her come to terms with her nervous energy before he tries to talk about anything. This is why she loves him. 

She loves him, she loves him. She moves from her feet to her knees, so they’re about eye level. She kisses him again, both slightly off balance. She has her hand on his face, and Chase moves to touch her and shifts a little too far, toppling over onto the pillows with his hand firmly around her waist. They both go down, a little hard, and burst out laughing at how clumsy this whole morning has been. Gert rolls over, ready to get off the bed. Chase snags her by the waist again, and pulls her to his front. They’re spooning now, Gert kind of hates that word, but she lets him hold her and unsubtly smell her hair. She wiggles to get closer. Chase shifts his hips back so they’re not pressed directly against each other. Hmm. Suspicious behavior on the part of the boyfriend. Gert considers leaving the matter be so as not to embarrass him, but like, c’mon. It’s Chase. What has she spent her whole life doing if not pushing him, waiting for retaliation. She shifts again. 

“Gert, come on.” Chase has taken a whiny tone with her, already clear about what she’s up to. It’s bizarre sometimes, the way they can still read each other. Chase especially still knows Gert, in a sort of unfair, never-ending way. He can play this game of cat and mouse with her because he can always tell when he needs to be the cat and when he needs to be the mouse. It’s safe, feels warm. The bed is warm, too, and so is Chase. 

“Chase, I don’t care about your boner, please just let me cuddle you.” Gert smiles when he sighs, and wiggles back so they’re pressed fully together. She can feel his dick, but mostly because she’s aware of it. And she is very aware of it. It doesn’t matter, and she still sort of stands by her thing about taking it slower than last time, and they had sex yesterday afternoon when Nico was doing strength training with Molly. Mostly Gert’s trying to enjoy the cuddling. 

Because Chase holding her is, not to exaggerate, one of the top three feelings in the world. It’s probably orgasms, cuddling, and the feeling she gets when she wins an argument. All of these feelings are things she gets with Chase. There’s a safety in him she’s trying to let herself believe. She’s not fully there, yet. Even after asking to be held, she’s hyper-aware of all of her limbs, how she’s sitting against him, the way she could back out of this moment and convince him to just have sex. Well, just is the wrong word, but if she’s honest, she feels more vulnerable now than she did naked in front of him yesterday afternoon, when they skipped lunch to see how far she could go comfortably. Turns out, all the way. She doesn’t know why she can let Chase eat her out for 20 minutes but is tense now. She feels like she’s waiting for some other shoe to drop. 

Chase shifts one of his arms on her waist, breaking her out of her spiral. His breathing has slowed, and his body is relaxed against her. She thinks he’s going to fall back asleep, but he starts talking instead. “You know, I bet I could get Molly to help me lift the Rolls today, I need to check something that rattled when I turned her on last.” He yawns a little, deeply content. “I need to put a couch in that room so she can nap, I need her help too often to let her sleep on the floor.” 

“You sound like you need a nap, babe.” Gert puts her hand over his where he is absentmindedly petting her stomach. “You can always tell me if I keep you up, you know.” 

“I know I can, Gert. But you don’t. I spent way too long not hearing your voice, I want to listen to it for hours.” He pulls her a little tighter to him and she blushes. 

“Okay. If you’re sure.” 

“I am the most sure I have ever been, my love.” He sounds particularly dopey, and Gert wrinkles her nose. 

“My love?” She is still blushing. 

“I was just trying it out. Too much?” 

“Maybe. I don’t know, give it time.” It made her heart beat faster and stronger, but she didn’t know how much of a thing she wanted this to be. Love was one thing, but pet names? Soothing motions as they lay next to each other? Every single day something happened that hit the raw nerve of emotion that ran through Gert’s core. 

“I’ll give it all the time in the world, sugarbear.” 

“Definitely not that one, jockstrap.” 

Chase huffs. “We’re all the way back to jockstrap? I expected better of you, sweetlips. There was real growth today, I thought we were nearing a breakthrough.” Something in the therapy talk makes Gert tense. What if she was moving to slow for him? This was so delicate, she felt like she was holding spun sugar. Chase feels her shift. “Hey, I’m joking. You can call me whatever you want. Well…” He considers for a second, tapping his chin in faux-thought. “Yeah no, you can call me whatever you want.” 

“Okay. I’m sorry, this just feels like so much, so fast, and I don’t know where I am sometimes.” Gert sighs, shakier than she’d like to be. 

“It feels like that for all of us. No one is holding a secret plan, we’re all just trying to get through this. Do the right thing. And this feels like the right thing, Gert, me and you.” He sits up, gets her to roll over and look at him. “Let’s make a deal. We can always talk about worries and fears, but we’re gonna do other things too. Like...” He looks around, then points with force at Gert’s bedside table. “Read to each other! I am your captive audience for all things feminist theory. And there is Treasure Island up there, I haven’t read that in years. We’ll be worried, and we’ll read. And someday, when this is over, we’ll move somewhere so far away we won’t have any of the same worries, and we can start all over.” Chase is lit up like a Christmas tree, all Big Idea face. Gert can’t help it. She smiles too. 

“Okay. That sounds nice.” Her stomach growls, and Chase laughs. 

“Come on, dollface. Let’s get some breakfast.” He crawls out of bed, and Gert takes one last look at their golden halo, perfect moment mood lighting. Then she follows him out.


End file.
